There are two in-game concepts called Poise.
- The player has the stat Poise, aka "armor poise", which is obtained from Armor, the Lothric Knight Long Spear, Yhorm's Greatshield and the Wolf Ring. Max poise 50.15 - 67.45.
- And the hidden value "poise health" that determines when your "hyperarmor frames" are interrupted, goes from 100 to 0.
The visible stat Poise acts as a defense stat for this poise health, reducing how much poise damage is inflicted by enemy attacks.
The stagger resistance given by the skills Unfaltering Prayer, Perseverance, Stone Flesh, and the pyromancy Iron Flesh are unaffected by your Poise stat. These have their own independent "poise health". The Great Hammer version of Perseverance, however, does activate the player's poise.
The ability to withstand attacks without breaking form
How Poise Works
In a nutshell, the Poise stat (aka armor poise) reduce the poise damage taken by hits by that number percentage, still if you don't attack or attack with "small and fast weapons" you will be no matter what stunned, you are only able to resist stagger during attacks with "hyperarmor" frames (Ultra Greatswords, Great Hammers, 2 handed Greatswords and certain WA ), and your Poise stat determines how many attacks you can take before you can be staggered out of hyperarmor frames. Because hyperarmor frames are not fully uninterruptible and use Poise to determine whether or not you can be interrupted, it would be more accurate to call them "active poise". In the game's code, the supposedly deactivated value for poise is in fact activated during animations with active poise.
All characters using the player model, including the player character, most NPCs, and non-player invaders, have a hidden poise health of 100. All attacks that hit the character will reduce this value, and when the value reaches 0 the character will be staggered regardless of whether or not they are in the middle of an attack with poise frames. The stat Poise will reduce how much poise damage a weapon inflicts to this poise health, by a percentage equal to the amount of Poise. Your Poise stat is always passively reducing incoming poise damage, whether or not you are using an attack with active poise. However, you are only able to resist stagger during active poise, and at any other time you can be staggered regardless of how much poise health you have left.
Furthermore, all attacks and actions with active poise will give a multiplier to your current poise health (usually negative), allowing you to take more or fewer hits before being staggered. The modifiers for normal R1 and R2 attacks on weapons with active poise were greatly reduced in the 1.08 patch, to the point where characters need very high poise to resist stagger from one or two attacks now. However, as of the 1.08 patch, attacks with active poise will now automatically refresh your poise health back to 80% of full after modifiers. For example, if you are using a Greataxe weapon (maximum poise health for R1 is 27) and you have 0.1 poise health before the attack, then as soon as your attack starts your poise will instantly reset to 21.6. What this means is you can now resist stagger from one or two attacks every time you attack, which allows tanky, high poise builds to play much more aggressively. Weapon arts with active poise have much higher modifiers than normal attacks do, being anywhere from 0.30 to 2.00 vs 0.10 to 0.27, and weapon arts will refresh your poise health back to 100% of full instead of 80%. Attacks that are blocked by a shield do not reduce your poise health at all.
Your poise health does not regenerate, but will immediately refresh back to 100% every 30 seconds or when it's reduced to 0, whichever comes first. In addition, the 1.08 patch made it so that your poise health resets to 80% of full whenever you use a normal attack with active poise and to 100% of its full value whenever you use a weapon art with active poise.
To use poise, you need to know these things: how much poise damage your opponent's attacks deal, what the poise health of your attacks is, and how much Poise from armor you need to reduce your opponent's poise damage far enough to not drop your poise health to zero. In addition, since your poise health resets back to 80% with every normal attack, it would also be helpful to have enough poise so that 20.01% of your poise health is left over, as this will allow you to resist stagger through your opponent's attack every time you attack. For weapons that only have active poise during their weapon arts, this is less important since weapon arts reset poise health back to 100% instead of 80%.
Active poise is found on certain weapon attacks including, but not limited to, Ultra Greatsword, Greathammer, and Greataxe R1s, Greatsword two-handed R1s, fully charged R2 attacks, most Weapon Skills, and the medium and heavy rolls. The 1.08 patch also gave active poise to two-handed Hammer attacks. Testing is still ongoing to determine which attacks have poise frames and what their poise multipliers are.
Sources:
https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/4vnan9/how_poise_works/
https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/58ru20/how_poise_works_in_108/
https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/58ppik/hard_data_about_poise/
Video Explaination
If You Could See Poise In Dark Souls 3 - Poise Visually Explained (Part 1)
Dark Souls 3 - Poise Guide (1.08)
Stat Poise Information
Each piece of armor has a Poise rating, and your total Poise is the sum of each of your armor pieces. Naked characters have 0 Poise. In general, wearing heavier or more protective armor increases Poise.
The max poise armor is Havel set with 50.15, with Wolf Ring+3 and Yhorm Greatshield the poise is 61.44 and also equipping Lothric spear will give you the maximum possible of 67.45.
As of patch 1.07. the Poise formula seems to reduce the effects of poise for armor and rings added once the player has any poise. Every piece added that increases poise will be subjected to the following formula:
So if adding the Wolf Ring+3 (9 poise) on a character with 10 poise:
Weapons Poise Damage
Information via Gamefaqs (Some values were changed in the 1.08 patch and may no longer be accurate. They will be updated as soon as the new values are found.)
If you wanna know the poise value of other attack just multiply :
1h R2 & 2h R1 by 1,3; 1h fullR2 & 2h R2 by 1,55; 2h fullR2 by 1,65; Run, backstep, jump 1h, 2h attack by 1.1 & 1.4 (Run) Dual L1 by 0,8 per hit Roll Dual L1 by 0,7 per hit
| Poise damage 1hR1 |
Weapons |
|---|---|
| 3, 5 or 7 | Bows, Crossbows*, most lesser Sorceries |
| 10 | Daggers, Torch, most Throwing Items, some Miracles |
| 11 | Thrusting swords, Caestus |
| 14 | Straight Swords, Curved Swords, Katanas, Axes, Spears, Pikes, Reapers, Whips, Claws & Fists, Pyromancy Flame, Bare fists, Staves, most Sorcereries |
| 19 | Halberds, most Pyromancy |
| 25 | Hammers, Follower Torch, Small Shields, Great Chaos Orb |
| 26 | Greatswords, Standard Shields |
| 27 | (Great)Heavy Soul Arrow, (Crystal)Souls Spears, Souls Greatswords |
| 30 | Lifehunt Scythe, Dead Again, Black Fire Orb |
| 31 | Ultra Greatswords, Curved Greatswords, Greataxes, Greatshields |
| 35 | Great Hammers, Greatbows* |
| 40 | Dark Edge, Boulder Heave, |
*Avelin halves the single value, Headshot deals 1,5 times more (ex. 5 does 7,5)
*Dragonslayer Arrow have knockdown
Enemies Stance, Stagger & Riposte
Entities have their own poise, depleting it will stagger them (some of them may let you riposte them), if you do not hit them for 10 second they will instantly refill their poise.
DO NOT CONFUSE Poise-break Riposte with Weak Spot-break Riposte or with Counterattack riposte,
The first critical is triggered by bring the enemies poise to 0 with enough hit, the second one is triggered by dealing enough damage (20%-45% enemy's HP, no timer reset) to the creature's weak spot (usually the head) and the third one is triggered by hitting the creature at its right attack moment.
ENEMIES & MINI BOSSES
| Poise Health | |
| 0 | Mostly human type enemies, Rats, Dog, Skeletons, Follower, Corvian- Millwood- Ringed - and Harald Knights, Centipede, Ghru, Slug, Thrall, ecc... |
| 35 | Silver Knight |
| 45 | Fat Deacon |
| 60 | Demon Cleric, Irithill Small Giant |
| 62 | Boreal Beast Knight*, Evangelist*, Great Snakeman |
| 75 | DarkWraith*, Mimic |
| 80 | Headless Gargoyle |
| 85 | Black Knight, Fat (Winged) Lothric Knight |
| 90 | Deep Accursed, Tree Woman |
| 95 | Cathedral Crusader |
| 110 | Elder Ghru, Lothric Gargoyle |
| 115 | Ravenous lizard |
| 120 | Fire Demon |
| 140 | Sullyvan Dog Beast, Great Crab (double claw slam) |
| ∞ | Cathedral Big Giant, Pus of Man, Monstrosity of Sin (grab) |
*Heavy hitstun will always stagger them
BOSSES
| Poise Health | |
| 0 | Friede, Crystal Sage |
| 98 | Gael (1st phase also instastaggered by knowdowns, 2nd phase by headshot, instastunned when he pulls out crossbow ) |
| 120 | Oceiros, Fire Demon |
| 150 | Sulyvahn |
| 170 | Boreal Dancer , Demon King, Gravetender Wolf, Soul of Cinder (some of his attack will weaken him to poise damage by 1.5) |
| 185 | Gundyr |
| 200 | Vordt (during breath) |
| 210 | Twin Princess, Demon Princes (the body in 2nd phase has poise damage reduction to 0.9) |
| 215 | Nameless King |
| 250 | Ariandel (shares poise with Friede) |
| 260 | Stray Demon |
| 300 | Dragonslayer Armor (dont confuse with 2nd phase stagger) |
| 350 | Yhorm |
| ∞ | Greatwood, Wolnir, Aldrich, King of the Storm, Midir |
Video Source: Bosses poise comparison - Dark Souls 3
PVE Poise Damage
Usually enemies tend to do from 15 to 45 for fast attack and 70 to 130 for strong attack and 5 for spell and arrow , this are poise damage value while having 0 armor poise (being naked or wearing stripes) , equipping armor reduce the poise damage by that percentage (Ex. 30 armor poise reduce eneny poise damage by 30% , so an attack of 30 PM will be reduce to 21 PM).
The max poise is Havel set with 50.15, with Wolf Ring+3 and Yhorm Greatshield the max poise is 61.44 and also equipping Lothric spear will give you 67.45.
Here there's a list of Bosses' poise damage attack
GUNDYR: fast attacks 10, 12, 15, 20, 25 ; strong attacks 70
VORDT: fast attacks 45, 55 ; strong attacks & charge 70
DEACON: candlestick 15, fire orb 25
ABYSS WATCHERS: all slash 25, knife 5, 50 slam , 25 flames
SULYVAHN: paired slash 15, single slash 30
ALDRICH: projectiles 12 , 30, 35
DEMON KING: 25, 30 ,50 fire ring, 70 meteor
YHORM: always 30
DANCER: 25; 30, 45 ; 70
OCEIROS: 35 ; 70
DRAGONSLAYER: 30 ; 70
LORIAN.: 30 ; 70 LOTHRIC.: projectile 30 ; small orbs 10 x hit
SOUL OF CINDER: every move has different value 45, 12, 20, 25, 30. 55 ,70 ,100, magic 10, 30, 45
NAMELESS KING: main slashes 55, 70 , minor slashes 10, 15
FRIEDE:15, 25, ice 30 , Slam 55, ARIANDEL 70, black flame 130
GAEL: 1st phase 15, grab 45 ;
2nd phase 20+5 mantle ,explosion 50, lighting 0
MIDIR: 130, fire n laser 999
Trivia
For a long time, it was believed that the poise stat either didn't work or was intentionally disabled on release, due to a player finding a value in the game's code that determined whether or not poise was active and seeing that the value was 'off' by default. It was later discovered by other people that this value was only turned on during what was thought to be hyperarmor frames at the time, and that poise damage is constantly being calculated at all times but you are only able to resist stagger during attacks or actions with hyperarmor frames.
Boulder Heave is unique among spells in that it also inflicts poise damage. If an opponent is struck by the debris, it will deal a large amount of poise damage. However, spells and skills that cause knockdown do not take poise into account.
Enemies that do not use the player model, such as Darkwraiths, Silver Knights, and Black Knights, do not follow the same rules for poise that the player character and NPCs do.
| Stats |
Attunement ♦ Bleed ♦ Curse ♦ Dark Defense ♦ Dexterity ♦ Endurance ♦ Equipment Load ♦ Faith ♦ Fire Defense ♦ FP ♦ Frostbite ♦ Intelligence ♦ Item Discovery ♦ Lightning Defense ♦ Luck ♦ Magic Defense ♦ Physical Defense ♦ Poison ♦ Strength ♦ Vigor ♦ Vitality |
Anonymous*ANGRY HAVEL NOISES*
Seriously though, despite the fact it’s a blatant pile of horseshit, it gives people a reason to use moves like stone flesh
- Anonymous
Gotta love how anyone who complains about the poise in this game being garbage gets downvoted to hell, apparently people love getting stunlocked and ragdolled by being poked with toothpicks and slightly strong gusts of wind, poise in this game is just plain garbage, I get why they nerfed it to stop poise-monsters from just brute-forcing their way through the game and to stop it from making high poise too powerful in PvP, but did they really need to nerf it to the point that an over 50 poise-having Havel build gets stunlocked by an emaciated retard with a broken butter knife as easily as a almost-naked caveman in nothing but a dirty soiled diaper?
Ik people here don't like Ds2
But I seriously think the poise
In this game Should've been the same as Ds2 poise, it struck a good balance by making it so that poise definitely goes a long way, but not to the point that wearing
High poise armour like Havel's armour trivialises alot of the game and lets you brute-force your way through a boss effortlessly, but no, they decided to just nerf it into the ground to the point it doesn't to jack-**** instead, cool
- Anonymous
Hah, this is hilarious, I try to figure out how poise works here compared to elden ring, here most everyone complains about how ds3 poise is trash and we need to revert to older poise method. Then I go to elden ring page and everyone complains that ER poise is trash and needs to revert back to ds3 poise lol.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Remember when poise actually did it's damn job in Ds1/2? Yeah I miss that, no surprise that this game butchered it considering its the worst dark souls game overall
- Anonymous
Hopefully with how long Elden Ring has been around, along with players facing their fair share of bullgoats (or becoming a bullgoat) people actually have an idea of how poise works now.
- Anonymous
Okay I get it, I'll go grab a shield. Shields are good for both Ds1 and Ds3 pve. Get close to boss, test attack timings with shield and then if you want to attack, use your rolls to get close to the boss. As for PvP, it was mostly a mini-game anyway, not the main mode
- Anonymous
Funniest thing is, with no way to upgrade your armor either, the pool of "valid" choices boils down to mages rolling in plate armor. In previous games if you wanted to play a light class you had in mind that you would be able to dodge attacks at the cost of having no poise. Now? poise is a joke so no reason to ever go in anything different than knight armor, half the build variety, half the creativity, there is no slow way to anything just spam a single button until the danger passes and fight back. Dark Souls 3 is just a gunless Bloodborne with spinning knights...
- Anonymous
Remember when your character didn't get stunlocked by a gust of air? Good times...
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Stack up to 34.08 for roll poise if you intend to PvP. Long story short, makes it easier to escape rollcatch combos. You'll still get hit but won't get stunned every time.
- Anonymous
To resume things, poise is dumbed down to who presses r1 first. You can elaborate more if you want, but the end result goes no further than that.
Ds2 did it better, and didn't screw over the time you spent finding/farming your favorite armor with "diminishing returns". Dark souls was supposed to give you plenty of options and diversity on builds to play through your game, but so much favoritism towards bloodbornish melee just puts it below ds2 in these terms. Hell, it's even inferior to DeS and that one didn't have either poise or hyper armor.
- Anonymous
Im wearing full gundyrs armor but i only have 44.37 poise, why is it lower than the sum of the poise written on the armor pieces?
I feel like this is a straight downgrade from ds1. Its kinda complicated and it doesnt work in game. Just my opinion tho. Poise used to be worthwhile.
- Anonymous
This comment section summarised:
- People whining that poise isn't exactly the same as in Dark Souls 1.
- People thinking they're extremely funny saying poise doesn't exist in Dark Souls 3.
- Anonymous
so in theory the poise will work when you're in hyperarmor frame and you will have poise health decrease from few hits and you can reset it by doing any WA or Perseverance
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
To whom it may concern: Only (Curved/Ultra)Greatswords, (Great)Hammers, Greataxes, Greatshields and Glaives (all Halberds that us the swinging regular attack and not the poke, like Splitleaf, Lucerne, the Glaive, etc. and Crucifix of the Mad King for some reason) use poise on regular attacks IF you 2-hand them. All of these weapon types get different poise scalings and base stats, with regular hammers and glaives requiring a lot of poise, while the rest doesn't need that much extra poise, if any. A lot of weapon arts also profit from poise.
Also Poise is only effective during attack animations but not right at the start, think of it like Shield Bash, where you're vulnerable for a couple of frames before the bash also blocks incoming attacks.
It's definitely not useless, you just need to know when it's active (And how much poise you need for your weapon to tank through heavy attacks).
- Anonymous
Good stat. Winning a single trade against a weapon will put you in much better position than having more defence.
Rule 1) make sure the weapon you use has HA during attack (GS, halbert, ultras....)
Rule 2) reset poise health with preserverence Weapon art after getting hit.
- Anonymous
This poise system makes as much sense as ds2's iron keep location. And equally relevant.
- Anonymous
Here's how poise works in DS3. If you're wearing full Gundyr's with wolf ring +3 and actively attacking with an ultra greatsword, a throwing knife will stagger you. But if you're fighting someone wearing cloth and wielding a reinforced club, they can poise through a fully charged R2 and combo stunlock you to death.
- Anonymous
Let's put it this way. If passive poise existed, weapons like Murky Hand Scythe and curved swords wouldn't be anywhere near as strong. They would still be string, but they wouldn't make matchups completely one-sided due to guaranteed stagger.
- Anonymous
Guys DS1 poise actually exists in DS3, its just everything deals 1568235 poise damage and hyperarmour was a small addition
- Anonymous
Seems really inconsistent in this game, especially coming from Nioh, which has both poise and hyper armor.
- Anonymous
People whining on here not realizing how easy it is to escape from and punish r1 spamming lmao
- Anonymous
So, in a nutshell, poise in DS3 is to get hyper armor during some attacks?
- Anonymous
I like how poise is in DS 3. DS 1 PvP is trash (havels, giant dads, chain backstabers or dark bead spammers).
- Anonymous
when you stagger a full havel as a naked person with your fists! BIG POG connection error, returning to your world
- Anonymous
Ngl
People are throwing a tantrum about poise, but it's legitimately a stat now.
Back in DS1 it was pretty much "poise or die". Now, like most stats, Poise has a place in certain builds, and has no place in other builds.
For example, an ultra with good poise can beat straightswords nine times out of ten when you have any sense of spacing and timing. And if someone's R1 spamming, then use spells, bows, or just parry them.
I don't know why people hate on poise so much in this game. Sure, it's not as good, but now it feels so much more fun to use well. As I said before, it's like a legitimate stat now, instead of being a coverall solution.
- Anonymous
“encourages r1 spam with heavy weapons”
except you can only swing them like 5 times max
- Anonymous
So everyone is okay about this braindead poise system that encourages the r1 spam, but everyone gets uppity about a parry system that requires some reflexes from you? Bunch of hypocrites defending what favors them and attacking what doesn't favors their easy mode.
- Anonymous
I seriously don't understand all the whining about how Poise doesn't work and Strength builds are trash now. Ran Dex + Int my first playthrough with zero armor weapons, picked up a Greatsword on a lark during my first ever Strength build and was amazed at how useful resisting stagger mid-attack is. This is the difference between getting your combo broken during a boss fight and breaking the boss's combo instead. Hilariously stomped the Abyss Watchers on my first ever attempt using a Greatsword on a boss.
What, are all you DS1-ers spoiled from having poise while idling? Learn to dodge and counter. Dex players have been doing that since the dawn of time. It's not that hard. Hell, if that's too much, learn to swing preemptively and actually make use of your Ultra's reach. I'm a casul and even I can manage it.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
This is my first Dark Souls. So there used to be MORE hyper armor in previous games? Yeah no fuсk that. Strength weapons are already annoying as hell. Hyper armor shouldn’t be a thing in general. Just reduce the range on all the fast weapons and increase it on slow weapons.
- Anonymous
"ds1 poise was a crutch for bad players"
Why spamming r1 is any better? Because what was once a backstab fishing, now it's 2 or 3 guys spamming a straight sword or their catalyst.
- Anonymous
The people who are complaining about poise in pvp (pve is fine) are the same people who would be complaining about a player who would Backstab them by running around taking hits just look at what happens in spears of church with 4 gank poise on a fisher boss player. Poise of hyper armor works for the sake of that bs not being in the game, gitgud learn hyper armor and find your openings with this “poise”
- Anonymous
They should've used ds2's poise and kept this hyper armor system in bloodborne, where it belongs.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
All these excuses justifying this bullsht of a poise system only encourages and justify spamming perseverance.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Then if I were to get damaged while attacking (enabling Poise) with a 'Ultra Greatsword',
would the damage be lessened during it with an armor with more 'PHYSICAL' or 'POISE'?
- Anonymous
Tell wathever you want about how ds1 s poise encouraged r1 spam, but ds3 s poise not only does EXACTLY the same thing, but also encourages doing it WITH ULTRA CLASS WEAPONS.
The dumbest thing about it is the "logic" they try to make out of this sht, like "hey, that huge dragon is going to squash me. Ima strike a fkin pose!". Look for someone else to buy your bullsht.
- Anonymous
This game would be so much better if poise worked like it did in Dark Souls 1. This is just...
This is just ****ing stupid. You could be wearing havels armor and some undead with a rusty spork could break your poise.
How do you **** something like this up?
- Anonymous
Are you shitting me, I only just found out that roll poise is a thing. I thought it was a bug because I’ve often had times where I would attempt to roll catch players with a straight sword but they would get caught maybe once or twice before the next R1 hits them but doesn’t stagger them. Is it meant to be this inconsistent? If roll poise was functioning properly in these situations I wouldn’t have staggered them out of their roll even once right? I’m confused
- Anonymous
Really torn on this mechanic. On the one hand, in DS1 a non pvp character had basically zero chance of defeating a pvp build. They could literally just walk up to you and spam R1, knowing full well that your weapon wouldn't stagger them and that theirs would win the trade.
On the other hand, this implementation sort of forces players with high poise to spam R1, because they'd never see any benefit from poise if they aren't swinging.
So it's sort of weird. In the end, it still encourages R1 spam. I guess now at least with proper timing a pve minded host can at least stagger dedicated invaders. But this mechanic, coupled with lag in pvp, sort of forces everyone to play way more aggressively/predictively rather than reactively most of the time.
- Anonymous
RIP poise
Thank you fromsoft for making heavy weapons completely unviable
- Anonymous
Poise works you guys just want it works also passive like in dark souls 1. Its working as intented confirmed...
- Anonymous
DS1 poise could be a crutch at times, but DS3 poise is non-existent. a hollow with a broken straight sword shouldnt stagger someone in full havel armor with wolf ring +3 and two yhorm shields.
- Anonymous
After reading comments im curious about how poise will be in Elden Ring? Or will there even be a poise?
- Anonymous
Demon's Souls never had poise, only hyper armor, and its players never complained. Meanwhile people here who don't understand how poise functions here whine their heads off. BB players never complained about poise.
But DS1 poise it seems became a crutch for bad players.
- Anonymous
My blood boils every time I use Havel's armor and I get staggered by a hollow with a broken stick.
I've beaten the game vanilla but I will never return to it, modded poise feels so much better.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
What is poise? Baby don't poise me, baby don't poise me; noo mooooorrreee-rreeee-rrreee!
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
The problem is not that we don't understand how poise works. We had plenty of explanation about something as simple as hyper armor and time to experiment with it.
The problem is: WE DO NOT LIKE IT. And why? Because without reliable tank builds being an option, this game is nothing but a non-exclusive version of bloodborne with layers of nostalgic stuff to get profit at minimum effort.
- Anonymous
in a way, the ds3 poise is realistic. When you would wear a havels armor in real life and would stand still doing nothing and someone would kick you, you would probably fall on the ground if the kick suprised you.
- Anonymous
Explanation 4 smooth brains like me
While you swing your weapon, poise activates
Some weapons have larger or shorter "swing" times, thus more/less time poise is active
When no swing, no poise
There ya go, now stay out of anything (yes, even whips) since not even wearing an armor made out of plates of stone matters; if you dont swing at the right time you are like a piece of paper
- Anonymous
As for the 1.07, simply the poise has a diminishing return like many other parameters (similar to bloodborne parameters system), the more you stack and the less you'll gain from stacking more.
- Anonymous
Jokes aside Lemme explain for you dex or mage builds and such poise isn’t too important but for ultra great users poise can be abused to your advantage. I used the wolf ring+3 on my profaned great sword with high poise armor and I was able to push through and win trades with bosses such as nameless and Gael. When using heavy weapons your attack frames start with your poise health not your start up which is why many people think poise is useless. This means unlike ds1 you still need to play smart with poise because when you time your attacks right you can deal massive damage without worrying about the stagger. Because what’s the point of swinging a massive weapon if someone can just poke you with their tiny lil dagger and stop it.
- Anonymous
In a Perfect world, Dark souls 3 would have poise. but this is not a perfect world.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
DS3 suffered the same problem WoW suffered, too much PvP oriented while the majority playes PvE.
Devs will be devs... RIP.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
If I am using a curved greatsword, what amount of poise should I hit for pvp? I'm to 30, but would 35 be better?
- Anonymous
To sum it up: Poise only matter for heavier weapon. It is only active during mid animation. The poise value determine if you are going to be staggered or not. Most WA have added poise
Here is all type of weapon that is effected by poise:
Hammer, great sword, great hammer, great axe, ultras, (axe?) if you are not using these weapons then poise don’t matter just go for absorption
- Anonymous
You want poise in DS3? Don't bother leveling up the Fashion *ahem* Vitality stat. Just level up Attunement so you have max FP to spam Perseverance WA.
- Anonymous
Do you know how poise could be properly implemented here? It's simple:
Below 70% equip load:
-hyper armor enabled
-inactive poise unless hyper armor frames occur
-hyper armor won't reset until poise broken out of hyper armor frames, wich sets instability frames for 3 seconds, allowing extra damage on the next attack received.
Above 70% equip load:
-hyper armor disabled
-passively active poise
-daggers, light curved swords and whips bounces off on hit
-poise break sets 3 seconds of disabled poise and instability damage before passive poise resets, in wich the player can be staggered
Was it so hard, fromsoft? Test it yourselves or with friends on cheat engine or whatever allows you to put this in your game, and give your opinion.
- Anonymous
It takes a fair amount of knowledge about the armors in the game but being able to measure out poise values from what they're wearing is really helpful when it comes to trades. I think poise is severely underated in many aspects because people just don't know when the frames are active. Generally speaking poise kicks in when you're roughly halfway through your animation. You're not going to find poise for most light weapon r1's, they're usually going to be more noticeable in strong attacks. The windows of poise for light weapons are only noticable at the end of your swing, which still can be used to reposition out of getting two hits. Taking the time to figure out when it activates and isn't active on enemy attacks is incredibly, incredibly helpful for PvP.
- Anonymous
They ruined the poise system by focusing on the unnecessary hyper armor. By extension they ruined tank builds and faith builds, so, this "poise" systems does more harm than good. Dark souls 1 and 2 handled it better.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Why don't FromSoftware just change the term to "hyperarmour". I miss the good old days where I can just walk with a Havel set without getting staggered T_T
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
For info, if you want to use a spreadsheet to calculate your AP, use the formula: a+b+c+d-(ab+ac+ad+bc+bd+cd)/100+(abc+abd+acd+bcd)/10000-abcd/1000000, where abcd are the Poise values of the individual armour pieces. You can extend this for additional items (ring/spear/shield) by adding all terms for e at each level with "+abcde/100000000" at the end, and so on for f, etc but for non-specialty builds the basic abcd formula will usually be sufficient.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
they could have just put a 404 here, not like it would make any difference
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
hmm, i can't seem to load this article, it says it dosen't exist, i'm not sure if it's talking about the article or
- Anonymous
What weapons have poise 1handed? To my knowledge UGswords Gaxes Ghammers and CGswords please inform me
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Some info about poise values of weapon arts would really help. I mean, everybody knows perseverance gives you ds1 s poise, but i don t think everyone knows a straight sword s 2h WA strong attack poises through a hammer s r1
It matters. Game feels alot more comfy to play with if you have 30 poise plus. People just don't like to invest points in vitality.
- Anonymous
I think this poise system is the best. I've recently played all of the games in the series and this was the best use of poise. In ds1, it was annoying as some of the main builds were a heavy armour, FaP ring, havels ring, some strength weapon or a fast dex weapon. Ds2 was similar but was better since weight load and stamina were separate stats you had to level up individually. This made poise a stat you sought out rather than one you go with since you happened to make endurance a high stat when you wanted more stamina. Ds3 made poise something that you had to put thought into. Should you tank the hit and trade or should you dodge? Can you even trade? If you used poise, you put thought into the attacks and didn't just tank the hits and then attack once they were out of stamina.
- Anonymous
Poise in this game isnt the same as in Dark Souls and just cause it isnt doesnt mean it doesnt exist. Can't people not *****ing understand
- Anonymous
i seriously think that ALL weapons should have SONE SORT of active poise on heavy attacks. cosplaying as a lothric knight, charging a heavy attack with the straight sword, just feels STUPID to be stunned out by being smacked from a guy with a dagger...like, come on. At least make poise usable with all weapons to some extent and not just the big ones, because it's just encouraging more people to use them. There wouldn't be so many R1 spammers around if R2's were made just a LITTLE bit safer to use, at least.
- Anonymous
This is why i use CE and turn on the 100% non-stagger script when i'm using heavy armor, get *****ed From with your stupid bs of poise. Mind you i'm just playing off-line with the Cinders mod though, so don't get mad, i don't do PvP.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Stop making novels in the comment section about how poise is bad, lol, go to a feedback forum to complain and not a wiki
- Anonymous
why does no one understand poise alredy? stop being a scrub and don't expect poise to work as something that doesn't let you stagger while you are r1 spamming with a estoc or a lothric knight straight sword. poise works incredible on this game with the hyper armor system. let's say you have an incredible big ass sword and you only have some robes of course you are going to get staggered but if you have poise you have hyper armor wich let's you trade with a lot of weapons depending on your current poise. BUT the little problem is that you need to hit The oponent before he lands you the hit, etc wich is *****ed by the net code OR your current internet. you can win against someone with 22 poise if you have 30 or 40, it cost's yeah but the two hits you can do with your GREAT weapon or your ULTRA weapon will be worthy if you have actual AR and VIGOR/VITALITY (health u language scrub) poise on this game is now trading wich works incredible if you have high poise health (38 - 45), a good amount of hp (1.2,3,4k), nice AR (wich you get from an ultra/great weapon or axe) and if you are two handing it. The cost is probably kinda high sometimes but when you find that classic robes guy or a normal armored guy you can trade and deal some good damage you know. I think this system is good and balances the game a bit more but the lag *****s up when you see that your target is going to hit but he alredy hitted you 2 or 3 times. Another little advantage is that you have a 50/50 chance to not recieve 2 chained hits from a small weapon (or a bit bigger i think) like a ss, estoc, etc. it's sad that the wolf ring doesn't give you 20 poise at least but with this they try to ¨balance¨ the game so only those who actually invest on vitality get rewarded with this hyper armor system.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Ok. everyone. Here’s the deal. POISE WORKS DIFFERENTLY IN THIS GAME. Ok, do we understand yet? Even after 3 friggin years? nope? well*****. let me clear this up a little further then... Play DS3 for the game that it is, not the game you want it to be. luckily, in DS3, outside obvious “look at the cool frozen sword and hooded jacket armor I found” noob build, the poise system in this game has led to a fairly wide amount of build variety. In DS1, however “Playing the game for the game that it is” led to, well, 99 out of 100 players being some variation of “Giant Dad.” That gets old.... pretty fast. Probably why I can still find an invasion in DS3 pretty quick, but not so much in D1 remastered nowadays (both on ps4, which is why it’s the remaster for any dumbasses out there about comment “ iTs cUz rEmasTereD... derrr pLaY PTD edItIon w/ DS Fix” Me=no have pc) i’ll take variety over being able to mash r1 with a claymore just cuz i put points in 1 STAT to raise both stamina and carry weight. As someone who played DS1 after the others cuz, again, only got a ps4, I found DS1 poise made the PVE and PVP pretty damn easy for the most part. Now, as the first comment laments, sure you can still get stun locked in havels, but you can also roll for days now, and walk while Did they nail it 100%? probably not. personally i think some sort of mixture between what they have now and the slightly more understated poise in Ds2 would be the best for any future games in this genre. At any rate, they must have done something right, as its infinitely more fun to watch DS3 than DS1, even more-so than watching DS2.At least high level play in DS3 isn’t 100% percent dependent on glitches, etc. which sure, one can “git gud” at, but as far as PVP is concerned, I think most people would rather improve their skills with intended mechcanics. wow. that was a long rant. tl:dr DS3 poise IS “working as intended.”. if you like DS1 so much, why don’t you marry it? (or just play it instead? maybe?) git gud, yadda yadda, hand wave with an eye roll and a sigh. kids today. sheesh (p.s. to the one doofus in the comments who called DS3 poise “lazy....” Inigo Montoya put it best, “ you keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means..” how anyone can look at all the above calculations needed to understand this system, that only turns on when the player is in an active state, i.e. attacking, vs “ you have a poise stat, bigger number equals less stagger. always” is lazy... well that is beyond me) have a nice day ;) Also ds3 pvp is infin
- Anonymous
So basically makes all Dex weapons useless against STR weapons
- Anonymous
I just started playing DS3 and felt something wasn't right. Now I see. This completely ruins the game for my playstyle. DS2 did the same thing with other stats that ruined it. I hope we get a Demon Souls remake. Until then I can still go back to DS.
- Anonymous
can they rename this already as its not poise. ds3 does not have poise. it has hyperarmor and a little hyper armor shield. thats it. i want my poise back. used to love rocking havel and powering through almost any attack. poor decision to remove poise.
i love dark souls 3 poise but i also only use vordts greathammer. *shrugs*
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